On this day
Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
In 1998, the world population was approximately 6,007,066,690 people[†]
1998Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Canadian basketball player[†]
Nickeil Alexander-Walker is a Canadian professional basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Virginia Tech Hokies. A shooting guard, he was drafted 17th overall by the Brooklyn Nets in the 2019 NBA draft but was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans.
1998Choi Ye-bin, South Korean actress[†]
Choi Ye-bin is a South Korean actress. She is best known for role in The Penthouse: War in Life (2020–2021), where she rose to prominence for playing the villainous soprano student Ha Eun-byeol.
1998Jackie Blanchflower, Northern Irish footballer (born 1933)[†]
John Blanchflower was a footballer from Northern Ireland. He graduated from Manchester United's youth system and played for the club on 117 occasions, winning one league title, before his career was cut short due to injuries sustained in the Munich air disaster. He was also capped 12 times at senior level by Northern Ireland.
1998Allen Drury, American journalist and author (born 1918)[†]
Allen Stuart Drury was an American novelist. During World War II, he was a reporter in the Senate, closely observing Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, among others. He would convert these experiences into his first novel Advise and Consent, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960. Long afterwards, it was still being praised as ‘the definitive Washington tale’. His diaries from this period were published as A Senate Journal 1943–45.
1998Swissair Flight 111 crashes near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia; all 229 people on board are killed.[†]
Swissair Flight 111 (SR111/SWR111) was a scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, United States, to Cointrin Airport in Geneva, Switzerland. The flight was also a codeshare flight with Delta Air Lines. On 2 September 1998, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 performing this flight, registration HB-IWF, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax Stanfield International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. The crash site was 8 kilometres from shore, roughly equidistant from the small fishing and tourist communities of Peggy's Cove and Bayswater. All 215 passengers and 14 crew members on board the plane were killed, making the crash the deadliest accident in the history of Swissair and the deadliest accident involving the McDonnell Douglas MD-11. It is also the second-deadliest aviation accident to occur in Canada, behind Arrow Air Flight 1285R.
1998The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finds Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide.[†]
The United Nations (UN) is the global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among states, to promote international cooperation, and to serve as a centre for harmonizing the actions of states in achieving those goals.
Article discusses reactions of wealthy residents of Greenwich, Conn, to tumultous turbulence that has engulfed stock market this week; photo (M)
Pres Clinton, in meetings with Pres Boris N Yeltsin and in speech to students at Moscow university, delivers sober lecture about hard realities of capitalism and price of international support for relief from Russia's current financial crisis; says there is no easy escape from financial catastrophe that has closed banks, left millions of workers unpaid and caused collapse of Government; officials say Clinton's meetings with Yeltsin were businesslike; only concrete accords to be announced at meetings are agreements to reduce both nations' plutonium stockpiles and to share data on ballistic missile launchings; both were negotiated in weeks leading up to summit meeting; photos (M)
Profile of Tim O'Brien, whose new novel, Tomcat in Love, has just been published; photo (L)
St Louis Cardinals baseball player Mark McGwire hits his 56th and 57th home runs of season, breaking Hack Wilson's National League single season record of 56; photo (M)
Gretchen Morgenson column on volatile stock market notes that Dow Jones industrial average rallied to close up 288.36 points, or 3.8 percent, on Sept 1; contends that overall market looks lot saner than it did back in July because performance of big-name stocks is now more in sync with that of lesser-known stocks; says strongest market advances are those in which both large and small stocks rise; notes that Sept is not typically stellar month for stocks; graph (M)
Chicago has become market to go in times of turmoil; even when market was riding high early last month, record numbers of investors began trading heavily in derivatives market, buying futures and stock options to protect their gains against decline; when market took dramatic swings last week, investors, both individuals and institutions, went into derivatives markets in Chicago; Patrick H Arbor, chairman of Chicago Board of Trade, calls Chicago 'risk-management capital of the world' (M)
Dow Jones industrial average rises 288.36 points, or 3.8 percent, to 7,827.43 on Sept 1, essentially making up for 250-point plunge that came in last half-hour of trading on Aug 31; stock market regains more than half of value it lost on previous day as trading volume sets record; traders and stock market analysts say that big institutions, like pension funds and insurance companies, took lead in buying; gain in Dow is second largest in points, after 337-point jump on Oct 28, 1997; Dow remains 16.2 percent below its high, reached in July, and about 1 percent below where it started year; volumn on New York Stock Exchange sets record, with 1.21 billion shares changing hands on Sept 1; photo shows traders reacting to closing bell at exchange (M)
David Gonzales About New York column discusses former New York City Mayor Edward I Koch returning to Bronx at invitation of Borough President Fernando Ferrer to view neighborhood that was changed by Koch's $5 billion, 10-year citywide housing plan started in 1986; photo (M)
STEADY AT FED -- While the slump has raised hopes that the Federal Reserve may lower interest rates, many economists are skeptical. Page C1.
Now that the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union is over, the United States has found a new use for its warning systems -- alerting the Russians about missile launchings around the world. President Clinton and President Boris N. Yeltsin plan to sign an accord to share data about the launching of ballistic missiles and space payloads.
City Reaches Terms on Rally The city and organizers of the Million Youth March agreed to limits on the scope of the rally. Page B1.
Fourteen men and women in their 60's and 70's recently took weeklong journey to Alaska with Elderhostel, nonprofit organization that arranges affordable educational trips for people 55 and over; bypassing more traditional, less physically challenging Elderhostel trips, they had left world of comfort and ease to hike across stretch of rain-soaked tundra on Alaska's northwest coast, 26 miles above Arctic Circle; they were traveling from culture that worships youth and denies age to one that reveres its elders; among Inupiat Eskimos, who make up most of population of Kotzebue, Alaska, there are no senior citizens, no elderly, only elders; highlight of their trip was meeting Inupiat elders who had survived 60, 70 and 80 winters on desolate strip of land; map; photos (M)